


Heart of a Tigerdillo

by whattheflameo



Category: Avatar: Legend of Korra
Genre: but I was bored and to be honest they're inconsistent af, lin beifong: reluctant friend to animals, tw: animal death, yes i know how lin got her scars
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-19
Updated: 2020-12-29
Packaged: 2021-03-10 00:35:45
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 3
Words: 4,345
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27634871
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/whattheflameo/pseuds/whattheflameo
Summary: Lin Beifong has the heart of a tigerdillo and now, apparently, a lifetime membership to the zoo.
Comments: 10
Kudos: 39





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I kinda hate this but it was haunting me from my notes folder so here it is I guess.

The best thing about becoming Chief of Police, at least by Lin’s estimation, was that she no longer had to justify the nights she didn’t feel like bringing a partner on her rounds. Sure, a handful of the officers- _her_ officers, she reminded herself- had given her disapproving looks about it, but unlike previous weeks, they weren’t able to actually comment on it. She outranked them now.

She wasn’t naïve enough to think that meant much. After all, most of them had still been cops for longer than she had. A handful were even her mom’s original students. But she also knew her own skill, and she was _good_. She could handle herself, and most nights she actually preferred making her rounds on her own, without the incessant conversations that came with having a partner beside her. There were nights she didn’t mind it, too, but tonight wasn’t one of them. It had been a long week; she didn’t feel like putting up with people any more than she needed to.

Today had been her third day as chief of the Republic City Police. Since being inducted on Monday, there had been a heavy adjustment period. The officers weren’t quite sure what to make of her yet, despite the fact that she has worked with them for upwards of ten years. She was only the third Chief ever, the first being her damn mother, who couldn’t seem to keep their tumultuous relationship to herself. The second... well, Chief Lee had been a good chief, the closest thing Toph had ever had to a protégé, but he couldn’t exactly stay on the force after losing both legs in a Satomobile accident. He’d only been chief for around eight years, considerably shorter than Toph’s twenty-four, leaving Lin the second Chief Beifong in recent memory and everyone else extremely uncertain of how to react.

Lin herself tried not to contribute to the uneasiness. She continued working on the case she had been following for several weeks even though she technically didn't have to- a wildlife trafficking ring selling rare and usually dangerous animals to anyone who was willing to pay for them. She had already had to deal with a Saber-toothed moose-lion, three catgators, and a Spirits-damned tigerdillo in places they definitely shouldn’t have been. Nobody had been seriously injured yet, but it was only a matter of time, and the animals had been in terrible condition. Lin had never considered herself much of an animal person, but even she felt her blood get hot when she thought of the obvious abuse they had suffered. That tigerdillo was, according to the wildlife specialist she had called in, never going back out into the jungle it had come from. One couldn’t help but be furious on its behalf. Feeling her anger rise just thinking about it, Lin consoled herself with the fact that she was close to figuring out who the dealer was.

Her shift was ending in half an hour when she decided to finally head back to the station. She followed her usual route, up Sixty-second to Watercress and then the eight blocks over to her office and, more importantly, the Satomobile she’d be driving home. She had made it barely a third of the way when she got the distinct impression that something was wrong. It wasn’t just the fact that the streetlight was out even though it had been working at the start of her shift. Lin stopped, immediately on guard, and surveyed the area around her. Unable to see far in the dark, she bent back the metal sole of her boot and slammed her foot on the ground.

The shockwaves rippled away from her, spreading steadily down the cobblestone street and through the packed earth underneath. She felt their fringes echo up the buildings nearest her and easily disregarded those she could see with her eyes. The ringing of metal sprang up next in the form of street lights, trash cans, dumpsters, their smaller signatures more defined for their tin and iron compositions. And interspersed with it all, the steady rhythm and movements of life. She ignored the ones inside the surrounding buildings, narrowing her focus in on the eight heartbeats currently circling her on the street. Seven are human, but the eighth is considerably larger. Some kind of animal, but she doesn’t immediately recognize it. She was halfway tempted to try and get another read, but a voice distracted her.

"Well, I suppose the catgator’s out of the bag." One of the heartbeats moved closer, finally resolving itself into a visible male form. "Hi there, Chief Beifong." Whatever the animal was, it was behind him, straining forward as though held back. She could sense it moving and feel the pressure as whoever is holding it planted their feet. The steps of the other people she had noticed all began to move forward until she found herself in the middle of a ring of what could only be triad goons. She eyed the lot of them, unsurprised to see that any easy exit routes were cut off, before turning her attention back to the man who had spoken. 

"I don’t think I’ve had the pleasure," she said dryly. It wasn’t a total lie; she had never met Lan "The Wrangler" in person. She only knew him from the various posters she had seen displaying this or that crime and the stories and interviews she had managed to gather on the trafficking ring. The majority of the evidence had pointed to him, but until now it had all been circumstantial. Hearsay. Well, at least when she got out of this she’d have the solid evidence she needed to drag him in.

"You know who I am," he stated with a grin. "And I’m fairly certain that you know about my current... business venture."

"If by ‘business venture', you mean loosing a slew of dangerous animals on my city, then yes, I do," Lin spat back.

Lan laughed, a loud, barking sound that grated on her ears like metal snapping under too much strain. "Chief for two days and it’s already ‘my city!’" Around them, a few of the goons snickered as well. She fought not to let her lip curl in disgust. "You know, I was hoping there would be a bit of a transition period between you and our mutual friend, Lee. Such a shame, that Sato accident."

Lin didn’t have proof. She probably never would. But the way he said it, she knew, down to her bones, that he had been responsible for Lee’s loose steering wheel. Fury boiled beneath her skin.

To her utter irritation, Lan continued. "With the great Republic City Police Force shaken, I would have had time to bring in my last few shipments. But this new girl comes in and there’s not a hiccup in the system. Business as usual. You’ve got the makings of a great chief, you do." Coming from him, the complement sounded wrong. Heavyhanded and slimy, like a politican’s promise or a businessman’s haggle. "Unfortunately, you’ve gotten a bit too close for me to let your career pan out." A snap of his fingers, and the goons moved closer. Lin dropped into a ready stance, waiting for them to make the first move. "Let it at her."

The command came from Lan, but it was the result that caught her attention. The person holding the animal back abruptly let go, and it surged out of the shadows: a shirshu, growling and foaming at the mouth. As if seven on one wasn't enough.

A waterbender shifted, pulling Lin's attention from the shirshu. Two ribbons lashed out at her feet, grabbing her by the ankles and freezing into shackles. Lin made a sharp movement with her arms, and the earth beneath her feet rose up and shattered through the ice. She launched herself backward just in time to dodge a lash of the shirshu’s tongue. She landed in a crouch, slamming her fists into the ground. A pair of rock columns shot up beneath the feet of two goons, slamming them into the buildings on either side of her. She turned to shove the earth sideways into the next pair, but a burst of flame forced her to roll to the side. The firebender kept her dodging for several seconds, her feet barely touching the ground before she had to move again. There wasn’t a chance to get a strong enough stance to raise a shield. Instead, she swung her arms forward, releasing the metal cords from their coils at her back.

Lin twisted gracefully to dodge another blast as they wrapped around the firebender. Never stilling her movements, she turned over one hand and used her momentum to send him flying. He crashed into a dumpster meters away, crushing the lid, and she snatched her cords back before crumpling the sheetmetal around him in a vice grip. Behind her, the thundering steps of the shirshu gathered into a charge. She braced herself in a horse stance and waited until the last moment. When it was only a breath away, she pulled both arms to her left, drawing up the earth on its right and knocking it off its path. Its tongue flailed in the air, misdirected from its original target, and lashed across the back of the waterbender that had tried to trap her earlier. The woman arched backward in agony before collapsing into a boneless heap on the ground.

There wasn't any time to stare in horror. One of the two remaining fighters sprinted toward her. She dodged the metal cables and the rocky caltrops Lin sent her way easily, but never tried to bend in response. Lin realized her goal seconds before the chi-blocker closed in. She ducked at the very last moment she had, watching the woman’s fingers sail over the spot her elbow had been a heartbeat before. Not having expected this kind of attack, Lin found herself stumbling on the defensive. She loosened the earth below her feet and shot herself backward, getting as far away from the chi-blocker as she could to regain her footing. So focused on not losing the one advantage she had, she didn’t see the barbed pink tongue sailing toward her. Lin cried out in pain as the whip-like tip came into contact with her face. Her hand immediately shot up to the wound and felt two rough gashes cross the faint lines that Su had left years before.

 _Go_ _figure_.

The shirshu charged her again, but she was ready this time. She twisted in place, sliding one leg backward and punching forward with her opposite arm, and sent a stone prism into the animal’s side. Shifting back the other way, she pulled another prism toward them and pinned the shirshu between the two. The impact shook the ground beneath their feet, rattling fire escapes and sending clotheslines swaying. When Lin snapped her arms down, the rocks retreated, but she could feel the sluggishness pulling at her veins. The shirshu fell to the ground and didn’t move again.

Her next step felt like it was surrounded by water. She was running out of time. With a snarl that sounded feral to even her own ears, she whirled on Lan and the two remaining opponents, officially out for blood.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm not gonna lie, this is just 1,300 words of Lin's officers being in awe of her badassery. But who isn't in awe of her lbr.

When a downtown merchant had burst into the police station hollering about someone fighting a triad monster outside his shop, Captain Zhao honestly hadn’t believed him. As Satomobile had raced toward the location, flanked by half a dozen other police vehicles, he had figured that the beast had just been an exaggeration, and that the real danger would be the triad members the merchant had also mentioned.

Even now, confronted with the hulking body of the animal, he was having trouble believing his eyes.

Apparently he wasn’t the only one. "Oma and Shu," Lieutenant Saikhan muttered beside him. Zhao had to agree- the animal before them was the stuff of nightmares. It was massive, at least three times as long as a man was tall, with huge forelimbs designed for digging and a pointed face. _A shirshu_ , his mind pulled from some disused pile of dangerous animal training, but all he could see it as was some kind of vicious, emaciated badgermole. It’s tongue lolled out of its pointed, eyeless head, drooling venom onto the ground beneath it. And unlike the triad members strewn around the area, it wasn’t breathing.

The scene they had arrived to had been almost _less_ believable. The alleyway had been all but destroyed, craters and scorch marks covering the ground, a whole fire escape knocked from its mount, windows smashed in. Half a dozen individuals lay scattered in an almost-circle. One hung over the rail of that loose fire escape. Another was was pinned inside a crushed dumpster. The hulk of the dead shirshu lay between two large earthbending scars, a considerably well-dressed man swearing and trapped beneath its hindquarters. And in the center of it all had lain Chief Lin Beifong, her arms paralyzed in an earthbending attack. Blood from two jagged gashes had run down the entire right side of her face, all the way to her metal shoulder plate. Zhao was hard pressed to tell which was more frightening- the marks themselves or the vicious snarl that had been frozen on her face.

There had barely been a second to take the image in before they had jumped into action, but Zhao was sure not a single person there would be able to forget it. A few beat cops were holding a perimeter of about a block, glancing back at the scene every few seconds in vague horror. Even the officers taking statements couldn't hide their awed expressions. There was no doubt that the story would be legend by morning.

The injured parties had all been rushed to the hospital, Beifong included. The one person who had been relatively uninsured was the man under the shirshu, and upon refusing to give any sort of statement, he’d been shipped back to the precinct. Zhao and Saikhan had the lucky job of detailing the shirshu’s body before animal control showed up. Zhao turned around at the sound of footprints.

"Got a couple more witnesses from the tenement above the grocer," Captain Qin said, stepping up on the other side of Saikhan.

"What’d they say?" Saikhan asked.

Rather than answer, Qin paused to frown at the shirshu. It made for a comical sight; she was a slight thing, around Zhao’s height and 50 kilos in full armor. Saikhan and the shirshu both were a head and a half taller than she was. "Is that thing dead?" She asked, her expression alone indicating what she wanted the answer to be. When they nodded the affirmative, she continued. "Only one guy actually saw it, and I talked to him directly. It’s pretty much what it looks like- they tried to jump the Chief and she kicked ass."

"Alone?" Zhao asked despite already knowing the answer.

"Alone," Qin confirmed. Saikhan swore under his breath.

By all rights, they probably shouldn’t have been so surprised. Zhao had already been a captain by the time Lin joined the force; he’d practically watched her grow up. He knew she and Qin had been part of the same academy class, and Saikhan was practically her right-hand man these days. As the most senior officers at the scene, all three knew what Lin was capable of. But this? This was on another level entirely. Seven triad members incapacitated, and not just lackeys, either. There was no telling when during the fight she’d been poisoned, but if the shirshu had licked her in the face, it had to have gone down _after_ it got her. She killed a beast the size of a tank while fighting one of the strongest paralytics in the known world. There had never been any question of Chief Lin Beifong's bending prowess, but the sheer power that had to have been involved in this fight was awesome. Having worked with both Chief Beifongs, he had privately thought Lin the better officer, and this only proved it.

"Witness said they talked about animals. No names, but add that to this thing and I’m willing to bet this had something to do with that trafficking case she was working," Qin mused.

Zhao had been thinking the same. "He say anything else?"

Qin snorted. "Only that he won’t so much as jaywalk again as long as she’s the chief."

"Him and me both," Saikhan quipped. "The poison’s not supposed to leave any permanent damage. Paramedics said she should be fine in a few hours," he offered after another beat of silence. Despite the promising prognosis, Zhao's concern didn't ease. From the way Saikhan was rubbing at the back of his neck, he could tell the younger man felt the same way. "Shame about her face though; that’s gonna scar."

Qin’s expression shifted from relieved to incredulous was so fast Zhao was surprised she didn’t have whiplash. More used to Saikhan's permanent position with his foot in his mouth, he just shook his head. He could distinctly recall the last time he had looked down at Lin and expected the side of her face to be scarred for life. She'd come out of that with barely a mark, but without the benefit of Master Katara he didn’t think she'd get so lucky this time. It was neither here nor there, though. They had more important things to take care of. "We’re gonna need her statement, " he said before Qin could respond. "And if this is really a triad threat we need to put her under guard."

"Good luck with that," Saikhan muttered.

"Yeah, well, this time she’s gonna have to fire us if she wants us to back off," Qin snapped. She wasn’t wrong- they had all stayed quiet about letting Lin make her rounds alone because she was the chief now. She’d never outright say it, but in her new position she outranked them and nobody had been willing to open that can of worms. Now Lin was in the hospital over it. Zhao turned back to the bickering pair, wondering what on Earth Lin was going to do with all these hotheaded youngsters.

"Enough. Saikhan, hold down the fort until Animal Control gets here. They can't be that far out. Qin, you and I are gonna start the rotation at the hospital," he cut them off.

Saikhan looked as though he would protest, but changed his mind at the last second. "Give her my best," he said instead, with a more sincere expression than they'd ever seen on him before. Zhao nodded once at him and walked away.

"We find the Chief in the middle of one of the most violent scenes of the last decade and all he can comment on is the fact that she’s going to have scars," Qin muttered, still appalled. "If it were him, that thing would have eaten him."

Zhao scoffed a laugh. Once again, she wasn’t wrong, but the Lieutenant _was_ learning pretty fast. And it was a good thing, too- Lin had mentioned considering bumping him to Captain the next time there was an opening, and Zhao was about to give his commanding officer a lecture that would probably get him fired. If it kept the young Chief from getting herself killed before her first year in office, it would be worth it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I promise Lin comes back in the next chapter.


	3. Chapter 3

The worst thing about becoming Chief of Police, at least by Lin’s estimation, was the paperwork. In her previous positions, she had been able to push most of the forms off on someone of the same rank, usually by winning some kind of bet. But now, they all required her signature, specifically, and no amount of successful pushup contests would get her out of it.

It was even more annoying when the paperwork was her own fault, she mused as she made another change to the new uniform designs. She’d first proposed the idea after the incident with the qi blocker and the shirshu. If she had known then how utterly incompetent the council’s chosen designers would be, she would have just done it herself. Better to have to sit and go through a thousand drafts than to have someone lose their bending in a fight, she reminded herself. The very thought sent a shiver down her spine.

Changes made, she slipped the sheets of paper back into their envelopes and stood to take them to the mail room. Detouring on the way back to grab a coffee from the break room, she overheard two detectives chatting over lunch.

"You hear about that new tigerdillo exhibit at the zoo? I took the kids by this weekend; it’s pretty neat."

"Yeah, I read about it in the paper. Sounded like a big project. Supposedly some big time donor paid for the whole thing."

"Really? That must’ve cost a fortune. Who was it, some Fire Nation big wig?"

"Didn’t say. Apparently it was anonymous, but marked for the tigerdillo specifically. Hey, Chief, isn’t that the one you found in that trafficking ring?"

"Yeah, the one where you-" A thud, and she assumed that his friend had kicked him under the table. Lin hadn’t officially placed a ban on discussing that night, but most officers knew better than to bring it up in front of her. And yet, it had somehow already become legend within the station walls.

Lin hummed noncommittally as she poured her coffee. "That’s what they tell me."

"Ain’t that something," the kicking detective mused. The pair returned to their conversation, and Lin returned to her office, hiding a small smile behind her coffee cup.

It wasn’t as if she needed another reminder of one of her greatest failures of all time. Hell, she lived with an unmissable one on her face. Every time she looked at the fresh, pink scar, she thought of her reckless decision and the terrible example she had set for the rest of the Force. The fact that it had become something of a legend only made it worse. The city’s largest target had been painted on her back and she had hotheadedly decided to go out alone, putting herself in extreme danger, causing property damage, killing one of the world’s most endangered animals...

If she were honest with herself, that was probably the thing she was most guilty about. The thing hadn’t been out to get her, specifically, it had just been following orders, the same way they she had all her life. What was to stop some tough new player from stepping on the scene and putting her down because she was unknowingly on the wrong side?

So yeah, reminders usually made her blood boil. But Beibei she didn’t mind.

When she’d found out that the zoo was naming the tigerdillo after her, she’d rolled her eyes so hard it had pulled painfully at the stitches on her face. There had been a whole to-do to thank her for stopping the poachers, the exact type of event she hated, but after the speeches and photos and gritting her teeth, a pair of zookeepers had asked if she’d like to see the animal sharing part of her name.

At first she’d taken up the offer just to ditch the party. She hadn’t expected much of the interaction. How was she supposed to know that the damn thing would recognize her? Even the zookeepers had been shocked to see Beibei race toward her, bounding excitedly and making whatever it’s sounds were called. They’d let her help feed him, and play a truly humbling game of tug-of-war through the bars of the enclosure. They’d told her Beibei seemed happier to see her than anyone on the staff. 

She’d gone home with a sore shoulder, laid down on her bed, and cried for hours.

Lin Beifong never expected herself to be the kind of person to have a zoo membership, but after her third visit she figured she may as well. Mostly, she watched Beibei as he settled into his new space.

The bandages came off. She got the courage to ask about the other animals they’d confiscated- catgators, a mooselion, a warehouse full of more than she could even remember. She learned that nearly all of them had been candidates for rehabilitation and release- they’d been found in time. Her officers settled into the new hierarchy. Her new role stopped feeling so much like a farce. The heavy weight of the shirshu on her chest dislodged more and more each time BeiBei bounded up to her (Chuffing, she learned. His sounds were called chuffing). 

Lin wasn’t an animal lover, but if she had done some reading up on tigerdillos in her spare time, it wasn’t anyone else’s business. A few of the books had mentioned aspects of captive habitats that she didn’t see in his enclosure, and when she asked she got the answer she’d been expecting: money. Taking on such a huge animal hadn’t been in the zoo’s plan, and despite the fact that they adored Beibei and did everything they could to enrich his life, it would be some time before they had the money to give him more than a basic habitat. He didn’t seem upset about it, happily wrestling puzzle boxes for treats and still chuffing against the bars every time she walked by, but knowing that he was relegated to this while some of the others had had the whole world returned to them didn’t feel fair to Lin at all.

Life wasn’t fair, the scars reminded her, but she cut the check anyway.

She’d gotten to watch as they released him into the new exhibit for the first time, even before the official ‘opening.’ Seeing Beibei race around the wide-open setting excitedly, alive and happy and not sold to some Earth Kingdom noble because of her actions, specifically, Lin Beifong started to think she had been wrong about the best part of being Chief of Police.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank fuck its finally over

**Author's Note:**

> This was mostly a practice for writing action sequences, since as you can see its not my forte. Feedback greatly appreciated.  
> Yes I know this isn't how Lin canonically got her scars. But come on she deserved way cooler than her sister throwing a temper tantrum.  
> Yes, Lee is the little boy from Zuko Alone. Idk why I decided it needed to be done, but it did.


End file.
